Sure. Take your time, this thread will be here for a little while. Good luck with school. Anyone else wanna run with his points while he's gone? No? Didn't think so.
I can sure call T-Mobile's customer service if I'm trying to fix my Sprint or Cingular or Verizon phone, but it doesn't mean they're gonna be able to help me. However, if I had a phone from Cingular and wanted to transfer it to T-Mobile, customer service would help me out because I'm a CUSTOMER now. It seems that it works only one way - if you have a DVC-1000, you sure can get support from Sorenson!
The equipment and the service are supposed to be completely separate from each other. I'm sure that all DVC-1000 users call the other VRS technical support asking for help replacing their VP-100 or a DVC-1000. They would be told that they can't do this, because, after all, that's not a device those VRS support. They would be told they have to contact the appropriate manufacturer. I'm also sure that Sorenson's "technical support" people are not the same people who can issue an RMA on a VP-100 -- it would have to go to a different department who handles that. So what's the point?
Go ahead and look into the R&D angle some more. Here's my perspective on it:
Costs are covered the way the government believes they should be covered -- you come up with the innovation, then when the government believes its required, they'll reimburse you for the costs from that point on. If it's not required, it shouldn't be paid, because the government is not in the business of increasing innovation, it is in providing basic services to keep civilization running.
The taxes we pay would be astronomical if we had to also pay for innovation costs -- those attempts often fail and take a long time to succeed. All the costs would simply go to giving people jobs in where their whole existence depends on them dreaming up new ideas on the government's dime. The minute you produce results is the minute the government stops paying you for thinking up new ideas. Thus, no one would come up with anything, because then they'd lose their free paycheck and actually have to DO SOME WORK.
So, where does the money come from? Investment. How do you get start up capital? Investors. The company should put up their own money into their R&D and when they get something viable with a good return on that investment, they should go ahead and release it. This a) Gives them a competitive advantage for a while when it's not mandatory, (things can be non-mandatory but still reimbursed, i.e., VRS voicemail) and b) Gets them more money when it becomes mandatory because they already have it out there when their competitors have to develop something because it's now mandatory.
